Learn to Live Simply

Alternatives for Simple Living

Alternatives for Simple Living is equipping people of faith to challenge consumerism, live justly and create meaningful celebrations.www.simpleliving.org

Blue Rock Station

Blue Rock Station is a sustainability center in the heart of Appalachia – featuring an Earthship, straw bale structures, traditional homesteading techniques, heritage and organic gardening… and more. Learn about upcoming workshops and enjoy a virtual visit to Blue Rock Station.www.bluerockstation.com

Democracy Now!

Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, pioneering the largest public media collaboration in the U.S. Democracy Now!’s weekday War and Peace Report provides audiences with access to people and perspectives rarely heard on corporate-sponsored media, including independent and international journalists, ordinary people from around the world who are directly affected by U.S. foreign policy, grassroots leaders and peace activists, artists, academics and independent analysts.www.democracynow.org

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) is the national media watch group, offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship. FAIR works to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints.www.fair.org

Free Press

Free Press is a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to reform the media. Through education, organizing and advocacy, it promotes diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, quality journalism, and universal access to communications.www.freepress.net

New Road Map Foundation

New Road Map Foundation supports a Financial Integrity wiki to share what they’ve learned and create a “go to” place for people looking to integrate financial integrity into their lives.www.financialintegrity.org

Take Back Your Time

Take Back Your Time is a major U.S./Canadian initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment.www.timeday.org

Grist

Grist has been dishing out environmental news and commentary with a wry twist since 1999 and is the one site you can count on to help make sense of it all.www.grist.org

WCRS 102.1 and 98.3 FM

WCRS 102.1 and 98.3 FM is Columbus’ community radio station and a project of Simply Living. Locally produced programming features public affairs, local music/musicians, and programs in Somali, French and Spanish languages.www.wcrsfm.org

Think Columbus

SOLE – Support Our Local Economy

Economic and Community Development Institute – Columbus, OH

Since its inception in 2004, ECDI has helped to start over 3,000 businesses in central Ohio through its Lending and Individual Development Account programs. ECDI also provides Financial Literacy and Microenterprise Development Training, as well as Home Repair services for the elderly and disabled.

Columbus Green Building Forum

Get Green Columbus

The Office of the Environmental Steward was created as part of Mayor Michael B. Coleman’s Get Green Columbus initiative. Funded in part with a grant from the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio, the Environmental Steward’s Office is dedicated to making Columbus a green community by focusing on Green Businesses, Green Neighborhoods, and Leading by Example.

The Freecycle Network or “Freecycle”

The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,810 groups with 7,245,000 members across the globe. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them’s good people). Membership is free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the search box above or by clicking on “Browse Groups” above the search box. Have fun!

Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE)

The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) is North America’s fastest growing network of socially responsible businesses, comprised of over 80 community networks with over 21,000 independent business members across the U.S. and Canada.

Local Matters

Low-income rural and urban households, though living in separate worlds, face similar challenges — and are linked by the food they eat. Local Matters works to create opportunities and forge common bonds, including linking farmers and Head Start families, creating community gardens, instituting projects at schools and colleges, and planning many other educational and practical ways to elevate local people and local foods. Local Matters is a charitable, educational and networking organization whose goal is to ensure that all members of our community have access to affordable, nutritious, fresh and local foods.

Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association

OEFFA is a membership-based, grassroots organization, dedicated to promoting and supporting sustainable, ecological, and healthful food systems. The OEFFA web site offers a statewide directory of organic growers, articles of interest to farmers and gardeners, and information about OEFFA and its activities.

Farmers Market Map of the United States

The USDA has compiled this national listing of farmer’s markers, including locations, schedule, and contact infomration. Click on any state to find farmer’s markets statewide. A wonderful source for vacationers and travelers, or get a list of markets right here in Ohio. Listings are alphabetical by city.

MAP Furniture Bank

MAP, a Columbus-based organization, serves as a free furniture bank for individuals and families in need. It was incorporated in March 1998 as a centralized clearinghouse for new, high quality, and used furniture, appliances and household goods. MAP is always in need of usable furniture and furnishings, and will be happy to arrange a pick-up at your home.

SOAR Energy: A Solar and Renewable Energy Buyer’s Cooperative

The Simply Living board has endorsed offering a renewable energy source to Simply Living members through SOAR–A Solar and Renewable Energy Buyers Cooperative. Learn more about this Findlay-based, member-owned energy aggregator and its work to promote green power and help make energy more afforfdable and clean.

The Small Business Beanstalk

The SBB is a local-first company that leverages connections of all types to support business and community growth. We use problem solving, networking, and relationship-building techniques to grow small businesses through a unique combination of matchmaking and concierge services.

Awakening the Dreamer: Changing the Dream

Before the Flood

Features Leonardo DiCaprio on a journey as a United Nations Messenger of Peace, traveling to five continents and the Arctic to witness climate change firsthand. He goes on expeditions with scientists uncovering the reality of climate change and meets with political leaders fighting against inaction. beforetheflood.com

Bought

Chasing Ice

Chasing Ice is the story of one man’s mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of our changing planet. Within months of that first trip to Iceland, the photographer conceived the boldest expedition of his life: The Extreme Ice Survey. www.chasingice.com

Deep Green

We hear compelling insights from dozens of prominent thinkers, entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers and government officials on de-carbonizing energy and restoring the natural environment. deepgreenmovie.com

Dirt! The Movie

Do the Math

A documentary chronicling American environmentalist Bill McKibben's efforts to build a movement to challenge the fossil fuel industry and to change the terrifying math of the climate crisis. http://www.worldcat.org/title/do-the-math/oclc/860711733

Fixing the Future

Food Matters

A hard-hitting, fast-paced look at our current state of health. Despite the billions of dollars of funding and research into new so-called cures, we continue to suffer from a raft of chronic ills and every day maladies. http://www.foodmatters.com/films

Forks Over Knives

Gasland

Josh Fox uses his trademark dark humor to take a deeper, broader look at the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the controversial method of extracting natural gas and oil, now occurring on a global scale. www.gaslandthemovie.com

Generation Like

Growing Cities

From rooftop farmers to backyard beekeepers, Growing Cities tells the stories of urban farmers, activists, and everyday city dwellers who are challenging the way this country feeds itself. www.growingcitiesmovie.com

Growth Busters: Hooked on Growth

Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?

Traces the worldwide economic collapse to a 1971 secret memo entitled Attack on American Free Enterprise System. Today, politics is the playground of the rich and powerful, with no thought given to the hopes and dreams of ordinary Americans. www.heist-themovie.com

I Am

In Transition 2.0

In a world of increasing uncertainty, here is a story of hope, ingenuity and the power of growing vegetables in unexpected places. You'll hear about communities printing their own money, growing food, localizing their economies, and setting up community power stations. https://transitionnetwork.org/news-and-blog/in-transition-2-0/

No Impact Man

A New York City writer lives for a year with his wife and daughter with as little impact as possible, on the environment, giving up electricity, toilet paper, cars, and much more www.noimpactproject.org/movie

Numen: The Nature of Plants

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song

Largely misunderstood and criticized for his strong beliefs, Pete Seeger was picketed, protested, blacklisted, and in spite of his enormous popularity, banned from commercial television for more than 17 years. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/movies/26seeg.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/movies/26seeg.html

Planeat

PLANEAT is the story of three men's life-long search for a diet, which is good for our health, good for the environment and good for the future of the planet, with an additional cast of pioneering chefs and some of the best cooking you have ever seen. www.planeat.tv

Racing to Zero

An upbeat documentary presenting new solutions to the global problem of waste. By simply substituting the word RESOURCE for the word GARBAGE, a culture can be transformed, and a new wealth of industries can emerge. trash24.org

Ram Dass Fierce Grace

Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey

A biography of Jane Goodall, primatologist and conservationist. It is particularly concerned with her spiritual development, and her message of hope that, working together, humans can overcome our differences and make the world safe and habitable for ourselves and the creatures our choices impact. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309727/synopsis?ref_=tt_ov_pl

Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping

As this self-appointed minister of social change sees it, America's neighborhoods are being overrun by exploitative corporate storefronts pushing dangerous transnational fairy tales. His guerrilla sermons aim to point out the dangers of indiscriminate consumerism. http://www.playloud.org/archiveandstore/videodata/reverend_billy

Scared Sacred

Ripper travels to the minefields of Cambodia; war-torn Afghanistan; the toxic wasteland of Bhopal; post-9/11 New York; Bosnia; Hiroshima; Israel and Palestine. This powerful documentary captures his five-year odyssey to discover if humanity can transform the 'scared' into the 'sacred'. scaredsacred.org

Seeking the Good Life in America

A documentary exploring alternative ways to live sustainably. Witness early explorations stepping out of more mainstream life and into alternative cultures, and see how one can be uniquely nurtured or challenged. http://www.ic.org/community-bookstore/product/seeking-the-good-life-in-america/

Shift Change: Putting Democracy to Work

With the long decline in US manufacturing and today's economic crisis, millions have been thrown out of work, and many are losing their homes. The usual economic solutions are not working, so some citizens and public officials are ready to think outside of the box. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/shift.html

Spirit Space: A Journey Into Consciousness

Split Estate

Split Estate maps a tragedy in the making, as citizens in the path of a new drilling boom in the Rocky Mountain West struggle against the erosion of their civil liberties, their communities and their health. www.splitestate.com

The Ecological Footprint: Accounting for a Small Planet

The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream

Suburbia, and all its promises, has become the American Dream, but as we enter the 21st century, serious questions are beginning to emerge about the sustainability of this way of life. www.endofsuburbia.com

The Essence of Healing

The Future of Energy: Lateral Power to the People

The Future of Energy is a revolutionary film that captures the movement across the U.S. to transition to 100% renewable energy and to bring positive solutions to the ecological crisis. www.thefutureofenergy.org

The Future of Food

Offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade. www.thefutureoffood.com

The Living Matrix

The New Biology: Where Mind and Matter Meet

Cellular biologists now recognize that the environment- the external universe and our internal physiology- and more importantly, our perception of the environment, directly control the activity of our genes. www.psychedelicadventure.net

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba's economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. www.communitysolution.org

The Suzuki Diaries: Future City

The Suzuki Diaries: Sustainability in Action

As they travel through Germany, Denmark, France and Spain, father and daughter begin to see what is possible as they meet the people who are working towards restoring the equilibrium between human needs and planetary limits. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/suzd.html

Transforming Energy

Triple Divide

Triple Divide is said to be the only documentary of its kind on the controversial subject of fracking capable of speaking to all sides, with exclusive interviews from the industry, experts, and Americans suffering in the wake of shale gas development. tripledividefilm.org

Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties

Visions of Utopia: Experiments in Sustainable Culture (Part 1)

Today many people are looking for ways to bring more community into their lives. Ordinary people with extraordinary visions tell their stories of living and working together to build a better world. http://gaia.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/GKozeny_IC-SocialLabs.pdf

Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price

What a Way to Go

A disturbing, compassionate, sometimes humorous personal essay about coming to grips with climate change, resource crises, environmental meltdown, and the demise of the American lifestyle. whatawaytogomovie.com

World Spirit

Yoga Is: A Transformational Journey

Thirty million Americans and countless millions worldwide have taken up a practice that is transforming their lives. Follow filmmaker Suzanne Bryant as she meets with the most prominent Yoga Gurus and teachers in the west and travels to India to explore the power of this ancient practice. www.yogaismovie.com